Representative Robert Milligan McLane

Robert Milligan McLane (June 23, 1815 – April 16, 1898) was an American politician, military officer, and diplomat who served as U.S. minister to Mexico, France, and China, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland’s 4th congressional district, as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and as the 39th governor of Maryland. A prominent Democrat from Maryland, he served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives during a significant period in American history, contributing to the legislative process and representing the interests of his constituents.

McLane was born on June 23, 1815, in Wilmington, Delaware, the son of Louis McLane, a leading statesman and later cabinet officer, and Catherine Mary Milligan. His birthplace, the Louis McLane House in Wilmington, was later added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. He received his early education at a private school conducted by John Bullock, a Quaker, and then pursued higher education at St. Mary’s College in Baltimore, Maryland. His upbringing was shaped by his father’s diplomatic and political career; when Louis McLane was appointed U.S. minister to the United Kingdom, the family moved to Europe, and Robert was sent to Paris to continue his studies at the Collège Bourbon. While there, he became acquainted with the Marquis de Lafayette, an association that reflected the family’s standing in transatlantic political circles. His elder brother, also named Louis McLane, later became president of Wells Fargo & Co., underscoring the family’s prominence in public and commercial life.

In 1833, the McLane family returned to the United States when Louis McLane was appointed Secretary of the Treasury in the administration of President Andrew Jackson. That same year, Robert Milligan McLane was appointed a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point by President Jackson. He graduated in July 1837 and received a commission as a second lieutenant of Artillery in the United States Army. Immediately after graduation he was deployed with his regiment to Florida during the Second Seminole War under General Thomas S. Jesup in 1837, and in 1838 he was re-deployed to the West under General Winfield Scott. Later in 1838 he was transferred to the Corps of Topographical Engineers under General Zachary Taylor, reflecting his growing responsibilities in military engineering and survey work. In 1841 he was sent to the Northern Lakes region for survey duties and was subsequently dispatched to Europe to examine dikes and drainage systems in the Netherlands and Italy, gaining technical and comparative experience in large-scale public works. While in Europe he met Georgine Urquhart, who later became his wife; the couple eventually had two children.

McLane resigned his army commission in 1843 to pursue the study of law. He was admitted to the bar that same year and commenced legal practice in Baltimore, Maryland. His entry into politics followed quickly. After campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate James K. Polk in 1844, McLane was elected in 1845 as a representative of Baltimore City to the Maryland House of Delegates. Building on this early legislative experience, he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1846 and narrowly defeated his Whig opponent, John P. Kennedy, by about 500 votes. He was re-elected in 1848 and served in Congress from March 4, 1847, to March 3, 1851, representing Maryland’s 4th congressional district. In the House he gained a reputation as an exceptional orator and, during his second term, was chosen as chairman of the Committee on Commerce. He declined to be a candidate for renomination in 1850. After leaving Congress, McLane moved to the western United States to serve as counsel for a mining corporation engaged in legal disputes over property in California. He remained in the West until 1852, when he returned to Maryland and served as a presidential elector for Democrat Franklin Pierce.

In 1853, during the Taiping Rebellion in China, President Pierce appointed McLane as commissioner to China with the powers of a minister plenipotentiary, simultaneously accrediting him to Japan, Siam, Korea, and Cochin China. Despite the ongoing civil war in China, he was instructed to secure and renew commercial relations between the United States and the Qing Empire and to negotiate, when necessary, with rebel authorities while maintaining formal relations with the imperial government. McLane successfully renewed trade relations but was compelled to return to the United States in 1854 because of poor health. Resuming political activity, he served as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1856, where he supported the nomination of James Buchanan. On March 7, 1859, after diplomatic relations between the United States and Mexico had been severed in 1858 and civil war had broken out there, McLane was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico. His principal charge was to determine whether the liberal government of Benito Juárez was worthy of U.S. recognition. In this capacity he negotiated the McLane–Ocampo Treaty, which would have expanded U.S. transit rights across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and granted an interoceanic canal concession to the United States. The treaty, however, was not ratified by the United States Senate. McLane retired as minister to Mexico on December 22, 1860.

During the secession crisis and the American Civil War, McLane remained a Marylander deeply engaged in the constitutional questions of the time. When President Abraham Lincoln’s administration took steps to prevent Maryland from joining the Confederacy, McLane served as a member of a delegation sent to Washington, D.C., to question the federal government’s actions. He personally believed that the federal government lacked constitutional authority to coerce Maryland but was equally determined, along with the rest of the delegation, that Maryland should not secede. Contemporary accounts, such as a March 22, 1861, report in the Athens Post, described him as delivering fiery rhetoric to crowds, including the declaration, “By the living God, the Susquehanna river will run red with blood…. I pledge my life and heart to march with you…. For what? To prevent a single human being from crossing into Maryland to execute the laws of the United States.” Like many political figures of the time, he was accused of inflaming public sentiment while avoiding direct military engagement. During the remainder of the war he largely withdrew from elective politics and refocused on his legal career, serving, among other roles, as counsel for the Western Pacific Railroad beginning in the winter of 1863.

McLane continued to devote his energies primarily to law practice well after the Civil War and did not re-enter elective politics until the Democratic National Convention of 1876. In 1877 he was elected to the Maryland State Senate, representing Baltimore City, and served there until 1879. That year he again sought election to the U.S. House of Representatives and was successful, returning to Congress for two additional terms from March 4, 1879, to March 3, 1883. Over the course of his career he thus served four terms in the House, during which he participated actively in the legislative process during a transformative era in American political and economic life. During his first term of this later congressional service, he was chairman of the Committee on Pacific Railroads, a position that reflected both his legal experience with western railroads and the national importance of transcontinental transportation. A committed Democrat, he also rose to chair the Democratic National Committee, further consolidating his influence within the party at the national level.

In 1883, the Maryland Democratic Party nominated McLane for governor. In the ensuing election he decisively defeated his Republican opponent, Hart Benton Holton, by approximately 12,000 votes and became the 39th governor of Maryland. His gubernatorial tenure, though brief, was marked by significant legislation, including the creation of the Bureau of Statistics and Labor Information and the establishment of a universal time standard throughout the state, measures that reflected the growing complexity of industrial society and the need for coordinated labor data and timekeeping. McLane served as governor from January 8, 1884, until his resignation on March 27, 1885, when President Grover Cleveland appointed him United States Minister Plenipotentiary to France. His service as governor thus lasted slightly more than a year, but it capped a long record of state and national public service.

After his appointment to France, McLane moved to Paris with his wife, Georgine, returning to the country where he had been educated as a youth and where they had first met. He carried out his ambassadorial duties from 1885 until the expiration of his mission in 1889. Even after his formal diplomatic service ended, he established permanent residence in Paris, in part because of his wife’s declining health. McLane himself began to suffer from deteriorating health beginning in 1891, and he remained largely in retirement during his final years. He died in Paris on April 16, 1898. His body was returned to the United States and interred in Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland, a city that had long been the center of his legal and political life.

Beyond his elected and diplomatic offices, McLane was active in hereditary and patriotic organizations. He was admitted as a hereditary member of The Society of the Cincinnati in the state of Maryland in 1858, reflecting his descent from officers of the Revolutionary War, and later served as president of the Maryland Society from 1885 to 1899. His legacy in Maryland’s maritime and conservation history was commemorated by the naming of the Maryland State Oyster Police Force (later State Fishery Force) steamer Governor R. M. McLane in his honor. That vessel, which also served briefly in World War I as USS Governor R. M. McLane (SP-1328), remained in service from 1884 to 1945. McLane’s long and varied public career—as soldier, lawyer, legislator, governor, party leader, and diplomat—was later documented in his own reminiscences, “Robert Milligan McLane, Reminiscences, 1827–1897,” published in 1903, and in subsequent historical works on Maryland’s governors and congressional delegation.